Star Wars: Clone Wars is an Animated Adaptation Miniseries, written and directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, and produced by Cartoon Network. Clone Wars is set in the Star Wars universe, between the events of Episode II and Episode III. Where the prequel trilogy teases us with the beginning and end of the Clone Wars, this miniseries puts the "Wars" back in Star Wars and actually shows the meat of that galaxy-spanning conflict.

It should not be confused with the CG film and TV series Star Wars:TheClone Wars. It could be considered a spiritual pilot for that series, but the two don't have any of the same writers.

The first volume of the series (Seasons 1 and 2) shows Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker leading the Clone forces in the Battle of Muunilinst. Obi-wan leads the ground forces, and ends up battling the mercenary Durge. Meanwhile, Anakin leads the space battle, then gets drawn into a one-on-one fight with the Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress.

Interspersed with this are shorter scenes from other characters and other battles: ARC troopers taking a key enemy position, Kit Fisto fighting underwater, Yoda and Padme rescuing two Jedi ambushed on an ice planet, and Mace Windu battling an army on Dantooine.

The second volume of the series (Season 3) has only two main storylines and no side-stories. Beginning with the rescue of the Jedi from the last season's cliffhanger, it shows the tide of the war shifting against the Republic due to Grievous' arrival. The Jedi Council responds by promoting Anakin to Jedi Knight. A montage of Anakin kicking butt ensues, then he and Obi-wan are dispatched to Nelvaan to find Grievous. In this story, Anakin receives a trippy vision quest that foreshadows his later fall to the Dark Side.

Meanwhile, Grievous leads a massive attack on Coruscant. Yoda and Mace Windu lead the counterattack, while Shaak Ti attempts to escort Chancellor Palpatine to safety.

The animation style is similar to Samurai Jack, but with outlines and CG spaceships. The series was originally broadcast as four-minute episodes for the first two seasons, then as twelve-minute episodes for the third season. Even in this format, the series earned an Emmy award.

This microseries provides examples of:

Air Jousting: One battle has a squad of clone troopers are with pike-like weapons on speeders charging the enemy - which then comes down to a Air Jousting between Obi-Wan (in clone armour!) and Durge.

All There in the Manual: Volume II served as the manual for portions of Episode III as it was meant to bridge the gap between Episode II and III, in particular introducing General Grievous, showing C-3PO's new gold plating, Anakin becoming a Jedi Knight (as well as the cosmetic changes he and Obi-Wan undergo) and especially showing the Battle of Coruscant where Episode III drops everyone into the tail end of it.

Arm Cannon: Most of the Nelvaanian warriors were given these as part of their grotesque body modifications. They tear them off after Anakin loses his own cybernetic arm, as a sign of respect to "holt kazed" — and to symbolize that they won't let themselves be what the Techno Union turned them into.

Broken Faceplate: In one scene, General Grievous grasps a clone trooper's head with his clawed foot and smashes him against a wall so hard that his helmet shatters and his jaw is visible. There's no blood, but it's reasonable to assume that trooper is down for good.

Captain Obvious: "The city is under attack!" Said by Windu to Yoda, as a veritable rain of droid starfighters are flying past a Jedi Temple window.

Chase Fight: The Jedi and General Grievous during the battle of Coruscant. The Jedi are trying to get Palpatine to a safe bunker while Grievous and his Magnaguards are trying to kidnap him. It all comes to naught in the end, though, as Grievous somehow made it there ahead of them.

Anakin's fight with Asajj briefly has them fighting in a darkened tunnel. All you can see is the red-blue reflections of their lightsabers. Anakain in Red, Asajj in blue; when they come out the top and Anakin finishes Asajj with the Dark Side, they are both shown in red.

Clasp Your Hands If You Deceive: Palpatine does this in his first scene, complete with what sounds vaguely like bones rattling when he taps his fingertips together.

Contest Winner Cameo: Of a sort. Cartoon Network ran a poll to choose which of three new Jedi would appear in the first season finale: Shistavanen Wolf Man Voolvif Monn, yeti-like Talz Foul Moudama, or Ithorian Roron Corobb. Voolvif won, but the other two showed up in the second season with larger roles than his. And then got killed by Grievous.

Continuity Nod: Numerous lines from the original trilogy appear in different contexts: "I have you now", "What a wonderful smell you've discovered", "Impressive. Most impressive", "There are alternatives to fighting", and "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Cosmetic Award: Captain Fordo (The red ARC trooper) got a unique helmet insignia for his service in fighting Grevious in the beginning of season 3. An unusual case of a cosmetic award actually being considered good — it's a highly prized Mandalorian symbol of heroism and honor.

The ARC Trooper holding off a line of Super Battle Droids by himself during the Invasion of Coruscant.

Asajj Ventress with lightsabers.

Shaak Ti with a lightsaber and a magnaguard's staff.

Grievous with four lightsabers.

Dynamic Entry: Durge makes his appearance against the Troopers (after his battle with Kenobi), by dramatically bursting through a window with his jet pack... The clones shoot him, shoot his jetpack, and shoot his body when it hits the ground, rounding it off with a rocket launcher. Durge unveils his more venous and large form after that though.

Establishing Character Moment: Episode III doesn't allow you to see just how vicious General Grievous could be. His first entrance here has him taking on, and beating, no less than 5 Jedi at once. And we do mean beating.

Expy: Sha'a Gi is this to Shaggy. He probably would have been even more of an expy by giving him the exact same voice, but the producers decided against it because they felt it would have given his death a lot of inappropriate-occurring humor.

Flat "What.": From a droid a split second before it becomes two half droids.

Flynning: Holy crap, so much Flynning. There's times when the Jedi and their opponents are just sort of waving frantically in each other's direction. This seems inversely proportional to how close the camera is to the combatants.

Deconstructed briefly; Count Dooku is shown training Grievous to defy this trope, which is part of how he was able to defeat so many Jedi. (And as we saw with his duel with Asajj)

Futureshadowing: In a cave, Anakin hallucinates, seeing pictures on a wall move before his eyes, foretelling his fall to the dark side.

Guns Akimbo: Captain Fordo's weapons of choice with his standard ARC trooper kit are his pistols. Then, in one brief but completely awesome scene, he does this with a pistol and the standard DC-15a heavy rifle.

Averted with the clone troopers, as even the ones who get a degree of individual characterization never remove their helmets.

Played straight by Obi-Wan, who wears a helmet for exactly one battle, and it quickly gets knocked off.

Hero Killer: General Grievous. In total, he effortlessly kills Daakman Barrek, Sha'a Gi, Tarr Seir, four Arc Troopers, 17 clone troopers (and that's just on-screen), two Senate Guards, Foul Moudama and Roron Corobb. The first six alone were in his first appearance.

Hero-Tracking Failure: The Gunship Rescue doesn't seem to land a single shot on Grievous. Also, the droid Nantex-class fighters targeting Anakin in Season 1 provide the page image.

Hollywood Tactics: During the Battle of Muunilinst, both sides are guilty of these. Especially notable when the droid speeder bikes charge at clone troopers who... stand still and wait to be run down.

Implacable Man: Grievous, who seems to be constantly aware of everything going on around him, allowing him to block and counter nearly anything thrown at him. It helps that he belonged to a race of proud warriors.

Misguided Missile: Used by Anakin to take out one of the enemy ships. They were actually fired by his squadron, but due to the exact circumstances a few missiles happened to lock onto Anakin's ship by mistake.

More Dakka: Almost all the ranged weapons are fired continuously until the opponent is reduced to scrap.

Motorcycle Jousting: There's a pair of episodes (Chapter 4 and Chapter 8) in which Obi-wan Kenobi and a platoon of clone lancers do this against IG lancer droids and the bounty hunter Durge, on speeder bikes.

Nigh-Invulnerability: Durge. At the end Obi-Wan makes him explode from inside and his pieces are still shown crawling away afterwards. Other comicbooks and novels confirm that Durge fought the Jedi again, and had to be dropped into a star to be killed.

No Dialogue Episode: A few combat-centric or clone-centric episodes. Helped by the fact that the episodes are only about four minutes long.

The first scene in Episode 22 has a commander of a droid base bragging that it would take at least 50 Jedi to take it. The droid standing next to him tells him there are Jedi approaching. The commander's first guess at their number is 1000, but there are only two. Those two are Obi-Wan and Anakin, who utterly destroy the droid army without batting an eye. The massive army of non-jedi they brought with them probably helped.

General Grievous.

Durge.

Out of the Inferno: So cool, they did it twice. First with Durge, then with Asajj Ventress.

Pendulum War: Constantly, with the ground battle for Muunilinst being the best example.

Yet again, General Grievous. Example: While escorting Palpatine to the safety bunker, the 3 Jedi taking him hop on a transport ship moving away from Grievous. His solution? Jump on the ship and slice the engines open, causing the ship to crash into the streets below.

Also, when the Jedi are waiting for the elevator to arrive, and are listening to Grievous beat the tar out of a several dozen clone troopers, a chainsaw can be heard, something which is not often noted to be in his arsenal of weapons.

More of an allusion, and most likely not deliberate, but the last two thirds of Chapter 20 showcase almost an identical scenario - in mood, conflict, and even soundtrack and sound effects - to the episode "Jack and the Ultrabots" from Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack.

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